Welcome to Wading in the Waters of the Word™ with A Women’s Lectionary
Gentle Readers, Followers, Preachers, Pray-ers, Thinkers and Visitors, Welcome!
Welcome to this space where you can share your worship – liturgy and preaching – preparations – using A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church. We begin in Advent 2021 with Year W, a single, standalone Lectionary volume that includes readings from all four Gospels. (We will continue with Year A in Advent 2022 to align with the broader Church.) In advance of each week, I will start the conversation and set the space for you all. I will come through time to time, but this is your space. Welcome!
Media Resources
A Women’s Lectionary For The Whole Church
Session 1, October 16, 2021
Rev. Wil Gafney, PhD at Myers Park Baptist Church
Plenary 1 | Translating Women Back Into Scripture for A #WomensLectionary
This session introduces participants to frequently unexamined aspects of biblical translation in commonly available bibles and the intentional choices made in “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church.”
A Women’s Lectionary For The Whole Church
Session 2, October 16, 2021
Rev. Wil Gafney, PhD at Myers Park Baptist Church
Plenary 2 | Reading Women in Scripture for Preaching, Study, and Devotion
This session provides an overview of “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church,” its genesis, production, and content. There is also an in-depth exploration of specific passages appointed for specific days including time for public and private reading and discussion.
Lectionary Lectio
Click the Comment links to add to the conversation
Marked for Death
Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–10; Psalm 133; 2 Corinthians 2:14–16; Mark 14:3–9
A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church
In the name of the One who waded in the waters of Miryam’s womb, walked the way of suffering as one of the woman-born, and woke from the grasp of death in the deep darkness of the morning. Amen.
To be black in this country is to be marked for death. We are more likely to be killed by police, in encounters with police, by civilians acting as police, than any other people in this country. We are more likely to be shot while unarmed, shot in our homes, shot in our beds, shot in the face, shot in the back, shot while running away, shot as children playing with toys. We are marked for death.
Our text from Isaiah says: God has sent me to declare good news to the oppressed… What is the good news to a people who are marked for death? Can there be any good news for any of us if some of us are marked for death, for marked sacrifice upon the altars of white supremacy? There are traditions here and on the mainland, of cultures in which human sacrifice was performed to satiate bloodthirsty gods. Traditions in which the narrative of blood soaked peace and prosperity was created on a foundation of blood and bone. We say, “the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots;” expecting that some will have to die and others kill in order to secure the American dream for the rest, or at least for some.
In some cases the human sacrifices are voluntary; persons conditioned to believe the myth step up and lay down their lives. Others are conscripted, seemingly always from the lower classes, from those with fewer options as we saw during the Vietnam war when black troops were used disproportionately as cannon fodder; they were marked for death. Yet there are some very few who offer their lives as a sacrifice for others, who choose death when they would rather choose life, to save the life of someone else. And yet still other human sacrifices are the toll empire takes on its subjects; there are always some human sacrifices made to and by Empire who are marked for death from their birth, individuals and whole peoples. Babies in Gaza are born being marked for death if they even manage to survive their mother’s womb. What is the good news to a people who are marked for death?
Centuries before Mary’s scandalous Child walked the Earth as the son of God, an unknown prophet writing in the name of Isaiah proclaimed:
The Spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me,
because the Holy God has anointed me.
God has sent me to declare good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberation to the captives,
and freedom to the prisoners;
to proclaim a year of the Most High God’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God…
Jesus and the prophet writing in Isaiah’s name each felt the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Ghost, pouring over them, seeping into them, filling up every empty and shallow place in their being for one purpose: to preach the good news of the death of empire and the oppression it brings and to do more than preach, to begin the work of dismantling empire from the bottom up, starting with their words.
The Spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me
Like the oil poured onto Aaron’s head running down his beard and down his neck onto the collar of his robes in the psalm.
The Spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me
Like the oil the unnamed woman in today’s gospel poured over Jesus’s head, oil worth tens of thousands of dollars or a smallish mainland house or a working person’s whole year’s salary.
The Spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me
Like a wave pouring over the rocks in the lagoons up and down the makai side of the Ke Ala Hele Makalae Path.
because the Holy God has anointed me
An anointing more precious than any any woman or man could ever buy or make because God anointed them herself with herself to speak her word in words of liberation, freedom and rebuke.
They were not called to hurl themselves into the gaping bloody jaws of the empire – though their words could land them there, nor were they called to start an armed rebellion; though many wars would be fought “for the sake of the gospel” as an excuse to enslave, colonize and steal land and resources – but they were called to speak a word, a word of power and liberation, and a word of rebuke as Sonya Massey did before her murder.
Our nation heard a word of rebuke this week when some of us looked back to the murder of Emmett Till on the anniversary of his birth, a black boy lynched by white men on the lie of a white woman, while listening to the final words of Sonya Massey, a black woman who called the police because she thought she heard a prowler, and was shot in the face by a white police officer with a history of killing black women, drunk driving, an unstable history with previous police positions and the military. He never should’ve been in that position but the empire looked at him and saw a useful servant to do its work. And when Sonya Massey rebuked him in the name of Jesus with some few of her precious last words before joining the prophets and martyrs, she also rebuked the mechanisms of oppression that leave black folk terrified to call the police, that allow officers to lie with impunity and face no penalty, to claim “fear” for their lives in any circumstance, even while shooting someone in the back or grinding their face into the dirt with a knee upon their neck.
Like the good news the anonymous prophet would preach and later the gospel Jesus would proclaim, Sonya Massey’s rebuke is just words, but words ring through the ages and stir the heart and grant courage and raise their heads of the bowed down and straightens the backs of the oppressed and move the feet of the enslaved and sometimes, just sometimes, bow the heads of their oppressors in shame.
And yet and still, Sonya Massey is dead. No matter how much power I or others find in her final proclamation, words are not enough. And yet this anonymous prophet and Jesus were anointed and appointed, called to speak words, to prophesy and rebuke – in the face of the marauding militarized policing forces of the Babylonians and of the Romans. And at the same time, every day some mother’s child lay dead and stayed dead while they preached, proclaimed, prophesied their words. And folk could rightly say words are not enough in the face of this carnage just as “thoughts and prayers” are not enough in the face of our self-inflicted national carnage where we sacrifice our children at the bloody altar of the Second Amendment words of slaveholders – words that are not scripture yet are treated as though God set them down in stone – while ignoring the actual words of scripture. Words are not enough!
And yet, four hundred and twenty years of African bodies stacked up like cordwood and sinking as monuments to the ocean floor, centuries of lynching, ongoing still, and folk kept speaking, keep speaking, words of freedom, words of liberation and words of rebuke. Sometimes a word is enough.
My ancestors in Texas never heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. That was by design. They were held in bondage along with thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of others not knowing that their cousins up north were already free – a freedom that would soon prove to be treacherous. But when they heard the word they, walked themselves to their own liberation. There were a few Union troops in Galveston accompanying the announcement but it was not they who liberated the people; it was the people themselves once they heard the good news, the word of liberation that we just celebrated on Juneteenth. Their blood too, and the blood of all those sacrificed in the American slavocracy also waters the tree of liberty whose shade was never intended for all of us. They were marked for death.
Jesus was marked for death for taking up the mantle of the prophet in Isaiah and proclaiming freedom, liberation and rebuking the empire that would kill him but that would also die its own bloody death. And Jesus was marked for death by the woman who anointed him with oil. She was preparing him for a death that had already been decided by those who called him too dangerous to live. She made visible the cost of preaching this gospel, of living this gospel, a cost Jesus was willing to bear to break the back of the empire’s bloody threat. Now death no longer has the final word. Not even a horrific gruesome murderous death at the hands of the police or occupying forces in Jerusalem, in Babylon, in Gaza, in Illinois or even in Hawaii, past or present.
Jesus, who was marked for death, came to deliver us all from the oppression that holds us captive and the oppression we participate in. And woe unto the architects of oppression, for the word in Isaiah also prophesied the coming vengeance of God: a year of the Most High God’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God. Those who do not heed the rebuke of God will be subject to the vengeance of God.
How can anyone remain silent at such a time as this? Choose your words and choose carefully. Though our words are not enough, for some of us they are all we have. And God is able to take those words and the souls of those who uttered them with their last breath and weave a tapestry of salvation, redemption and justice. And those who were once marked for death will be marked for eternal life. Amen.
How Long O Lord is a Womanish Question
21 July: Proper 11, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church
Ruth 1:1–14; Psalm 80:1–7; 1 Thessalonians 5:12–24; Mark 12:41–44Let us pray:
May God who is Majesty, Mercy and Mystery speak words of life, hope and healing through these words. Amen.
How long O Lord?!
The cry of the psalmist is the cry of God’s people across the ages, how long? How long will this go on? The “this” changes from age to age but the how long does not change. It is a cry full of hope and faith and trust in the faithfulness of God.
How long O Lord is a cry that begins with the knowledge of God: I know who you are and what you can do. I know your great power. I know your words of love and covenant and promise. I know what you have done for my ancestors. I know you. You are a God who lets yourself be known. I know you.
How long O Lord is a testimony to the power of God: You are the God of Hagar’s spring of salvation, saving water in the desert that would have killed her and her child. You are Miriam’s walkway through the waters of captivity. You are Deborah’s sword and Delilah’s escape plan. You are Esther’s courage, and Ruth’s security. You are the God who saves. How long O Lord is a cry that signifies relationship.
How long O Lord is not a rhetorical question. It seeks a response in the same way as, “how long will you let the dishes pile up in the kitchen sink” or, “how long are you going to keep dealing with that pain rather than go to the doctor.” It does not necessarily seek a response in words or a specific measure of time, though that would be acceptable. It is a call for action.
How long O Lord is bold and brash and full of sass like womanist biblical interpretation, for it includes a note of accusation. How long O Lord is an accusation in that the question assumes and presumes that were God to turn her attention to the matter at hand, she could resolve it in the blink of an eye, at the flutter of a divine eyelash, but for some unknown, some unfathomable reason, God is not intervening. God is not responding to the pleas and prayers of the psalmist or her people.
How long O Lord is a declaration that something is wrong in and with this world, something that only God can repair.
In the psalm appointed for today’s reading, the psalmist asks, “how long will you fume at the prayers of your people?” How long will you be so angry with us that you won’t even hear us and turn your head in disgust at the sound of our prayers? How long O Lord?! How long?!
We don’t know how long the psalmist and her people have been crying out or what it was that led to this prayer. We just know that her prayer has gone unanswered long enough for her to knock on heaven’s door and cry out, “How long O Lord?!” As her prayer of petition continues the psalmist reminds God of her saving work, of her might and miracles from ages past but, having received no response or divine intervention, concludes the psalm by continuing to cry out, “How long O Lord.”
This is the hard word of today’s lessons. One we already know. Sometimes we pray and cry and nothing happens. Sometimes God does not answer us or even seem to hear us. We pass the mantle of prayer down from generation to generation hoping that if God does not answer our prayer, she will hear and answer the prayer of our children or our children’s children. Sometimes waiting on God is an intergenerational affair. But sometimes God is waiting on us.
Naomi got tired of waiting and she decided to take matters into her own hands. Her husband had died and left her with two sons and they went into Moab to kidnap women to be their wives. That Ruth and Orpah were kidnapped is clear in the text in Hebrew but not always translated correctly. There is a long tradition of protecting the reputations of certain characters in older translations of scripture; which is ironic because so many characters in scripture already have bad reputations and the text loves to show that God can and will work with and through anyone and sometimes anything, whether it’s a talking donkey or dirty David. That’s why we biblical scholars continue to translate the scriptures and publish new Bibles and new works of translation.
And just as Sarah’s and Abraham’s scheme to provide the heir God had promised them on their own by forcing the young woman they enslaved to become pregnant and carry a child she did not choose to conceive failed, leading to perpetual conflict between Ishmael and Israel, Naomi’s plan failed and her sons died without providing her grandchildren. She had no male heir or protector to claim the family land and provide her with security in her senior years or even at the present moment. All she had was her two daughters-in-law who had every reason to abandon her to her own fate because she and her sons had essentially trafficked them, forcing them into marriage and intimacy they did not choose.
One of her daughters-in-law, Orpah, seized the freedom Naomi offered and returned to her native land; perhaps this was an answer to her prayers which go unrecorded in scripture. The other daughter-in-law stayed with Naomi, their lives and fates intertwined and interwoven throughout the rest of their stories. It would be through this woman, Ruth, that Naomi’s prayers would be answered; it would be through Ruth’s body that Naomi got her security. But we know nothing of Ruth’s prayers. Ruth and Naomi may not have been praying the same prayers.
Sometimes we are the answer to our own prayers and sometimes we are the answer to the prayers of someone else. And sometimes we are the answer to the prayers of someone who has done us wrong, done harm to others, or done great harm to this world. Sometimes the answer to “how long” is how long will it take for us to respond to the needs around us and let God use us as the answer to someone else’s prayer. But be clear, letting God use us is not the same as letting other people use or abuse us. And when God takes the tattered threads of our lives after we have been ravaged by someone else, and weaves a new story for us out of answered prayer, that does not ever justify harm or abuse at the hands of someone else.
The small line in our epistle reading from 1 Thessalonians shows us how we might just be the answer to someone else’s prayer, always seek to do good to one another and to all. Always keep your eyes open for opportunities to serve and to bless someone else. Some of us learned from Mr. Rogers that in moments of terrible catastrophe when we feel overwhelmed, like the wildfire on Maui a year ago, that we should look for the helpers, those who are doing whatever little bit it is they can because the work of helpers multiplies with each set of hands set to the task, each inventive problem-solving mind brought to bear and each coin given to the cause. Look for the helpers and become the helpers yourselves. I know this hale pule, this church, is full of helpers because that is aloha, ka uhane o Hawaii, the spirit of Hawaii.
That was the spirit of the wahine kane make hune in the Gospel, the poor widow woman, who gave all she had. When Jesus taught us that her two copper coins were more than the silver and gold of the others making their offerings, he offered us away to think beyond overly simplistic understandings of equality and equity. Some might say that if everyone gives five coins, that’s fair and balanced because the same standard applies to everyone. But everyone doesn’t have the same resources so for one person five coins might be sofa change and for another it might be their livelihood for the entire month. Jesus told us that she gave less and that in giving less she gave more. The widow, a woman whose poverty existed solely because of the structures and conditions placed on her by society, by her fellow human beings, by her own religious community, had nothing left, nothing left to buy bread for tomorrow. In our giving, we are called to give like this widow, gifts that are meaningful because they cost us something and not gifts from our excess that we won’t miss.
The epistle praises and encourages those who do the work to support the weak. But there are some folk today who would say that a program benefiting widows is inherently unfair because it excludes men. Even though men who lost their wives in the world of the text did not suffer the same disadvantages as women who lost their husbands, there are folk who would sue to get the church’s widow relief program shut down or expanded to include men who didn’t need the help. There are people today who spend their time looking for opportunities to keep those with only the equivalent of a handful of copper coins or even less from receiving what they need using false notions of equity and equality. Yet Jesus taught us that less is more, last is first and the values of the Majesty of God are upside down to this world.
But it is the values of this world and not the values of the Majesty of God that hold sway and keep women and children in poverty. How long O Lord will we watch the widow give her copper coins, praise her for her gift and do nothing to address her poverty? How long O Lord will we who benefit from the widow’s poverty be content to continue to accumulate and count our coins? How long O Lord will we continue to create a world in which women and girls are treated like second-class citizens and even in the wealthiest nation on earth can only ever hope to earn a portion of what a man makes for the same work? How long O Lord will we let the patriarchy in the church go unchallenged and uncorrected? How long O Lord will we be forced to live with the lie that this world ain’t no place for a girl child? How long O Lord will we accept the evils of this world like human trafficking and legislated legalized forced pregnancies? How long O Lord will we tell immigrants like Ruth and Naomi fleeing poverty and famine that they must stay on the other side of the border and we will not share our bread with them? How long O Lord will we simply accept the inequities of this world, shrug our shoulders and keep on perpetuating them? How long O Lord will folk cry to heaven like the psalmist because of the oppression we permit and perpetuate? How long O Lord?! How long?